


Ashes and Dust

by Mallow_of_the_Marsh



Series: Views of an Agricorps Station [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Death, Gen, Genocide, It's the Purge okay there's no way to be happy about it, Jedi Purge (Star Wars), Order 66 Aftermath (Star Wars), Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Suicidal Thoughts, well- it's after the purge but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29087529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mallow_of_the_Marsh/pseuds/Mallow_of_the_Marsh
Summary: Two relics of a bygone era come upon a place of ghosts. One view of an agricorps station- six years after.
Series: Views of an Agricorps Station [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2134125
Kudos: 4





	Ashes and Dust

**Author's Note:**

> CW: descriptions of genocide, corpses, death, child death, suicidal thoughts (not actions). All the pain that comes of being one of the last of your people in a galaxy that’s hunting you, except there’s two of them.  
> This is my first work on AO3, so I haven't quite learned how to use everything yet- let me know if there's anything else I should have tagged, and I'll try to fix it. 
> 
> Also, for context: Picture Ra’ult as an 8 foot tall bipedal monitor lizard. I’m sure you can picture what Geode looks like. 'Bral’ is a Mando’a nickname Geode uses for Ra’ult- it means ‘high ground’. Ra'ult and Geode are my own characters, and I have more written about them than you could guess, but this is one of only a few bits I think are good enough to publish. You can probably see hints of the rest of their story in this one, though.

The day began normally, as it usually did when they had no ongoing missions. Geode had woken early and made himself a simple breakfast, heading to the cockpit to sit and watch the stars and mindlessly tinker with his newest project. Ra’ult had joined him with a mug of tea not an hour later, reclining in the captain’s chair with a calm sigh. Their ship had steadily been making its way outward, towards one of the safer planets they liked to stop on- it was nearing time to restock, and Ra’ult had been complaining about running out of fruit. After a while of companionable silence, they exited hyperspace and cued up for the next jump, before Ra’ult became distracted by something. Geode finally looked up from his tinkering to see about the delay- Ra’ult’s eyes were fixed on the green-brown orb floating silently in the distance on the viewport.  


"Oh." Their voice was hoarse with shock, and they cleared their throat. "This is an agricorps planetoid. I recognize it from my studies." His brows furrowed in concern, some sort of dread filling his gut, "We don't have to go down there, you know." He certainly didn't want to go down there- he'd heard from Ra'ult the destruction that had been wrought on the innocent corpsmembers during the purge, and didn't want to add to his nightmares, especially not when they’d been so bad recently. Ra'ult's expression was grim, however. "I do. If there are remains left, they must be returned to the force, and even if there aren't, I need the personnel list for the alliance's records.” That settled it, then. “Then I’m coming with you- you shouldn’t be doing that alone.” Their eyes searched his face for a moment, before they nodded solidly, and turned back to the console to bring them down to the planet.

  


Geode had seen plenty of abandoned places over his three years with Ra’ult- they had been an archaeologist in the Exploracorps before the purge, and continued to seek out sites and remnants in an effort to record the history of the jedi before the empire could erase it from existence. He had been to abandoned temples and castles, separatist bases and enormous crashed cruisers. But this jedi agricorps station, as innocuous as it looked, gave him chills the likes of which he hadn’t experienced with those other places. He knew it was because of the history here- this station wasn’t abandoned by time or slow migration, but its inhabitants exterminated all at once during the purge. Awful things had happened here, very recently compared to the millennia old emptiness of ancient temples.  


Scans had shown no life-signs at the station- nothing larger than a small scavenging animal, anyway. And at first glance, the station simply looked abandoned, like any of the other long-lost sites they had visited. The fields had long lay fallow, native plants taking over where there had once been long straight lines of crops. Any dead that had once rested there were long gone, to decomposition and wildlife. "They have become part of the fields they once tended.", Ra'ult murmured poignantly, staring around at the overgrown fields. He wondered if they could feel the dead here.  


They looked up at the station's center, and Geode was filled with an inescapable sense of dread. The architecture itself looked welcoming- low cylindrical buildings constructed of rich red stone. But it had clearly seen better days, having been subsumed by plant growth and eroded at the edges by years of winds and lack of upkeep. The doors creaked open at their approach, mechanisms faulty and glitching, but it was a reminder of happier times and unlocked doors. They entered into the mess hall, an enormous room filled with round tables, dimly lit by natural sunlight from the domed ceiling made of windows. It felt like the room absorbed the sound of their footsteps, the silence and stillness of its emptiness all-encompassing. The only motion was that of dust motes gently floating in the patchy sunbeams that penetrated the dusty windows.  


Ra'ult walked into the middle of the room as if in a trance, eyes roving slowly over the scene. It had clearly not been occupied when the purge happened, as chairs and tables and benches were all in place, nothing broken or tipped. Over at the serving line, Geode could see utensils and plates stacked up ready for use, several of the stacks having collapsed over time and leaving shards of ceramic on the floor. Loaves of bread sat rotten and shrunken on a shelf-cart, turned to mold and powder by the years, and a blackened glossy substance sat at the bottom of a container- when he looked closer, he could see the remains of stems that marked it as having once been fruit.  


He held his filter closely over his mouth as he entered the kitchen, the scent of rot and animal feces overwhelming. He only stayed long enough to determine that there were no corpses here- only more dusty cabinets, rotted and mummified food, and scattered cooking tools. So he returned to Ra’ult where they stood motionless in the middle of the giant room, dust motes dancing disturbed around their form.  


From the mess they entered a hallway to the living quarters. Nothing seemed wrong there, either, except for the flickering lights and heavy layer of dust. The dorm rooms where the agricorps staff lived had an air of extreme loneliness and wrongness, these places that were so personal and homey now abandoned and torn apart like this. He averted his eyes from a dusty, grayed comforter on the bed, still rumpled as if its occupant had just rolled out that morning, and quickly left the room, following hesitantly as Ra’ult systematically entered each one.  


Everything seemed to have been turned brown and gray with the layers of dust, all the colors drained and personal effects hidden in inches of grime. Geode couldn't even read the names on most of the door plaques, because they had rusted away. There were holos on the walls of many dorms, but he didn't dare touch any to wipe the dust off, content to leave their occupants unknown. He didn't need to be haunted by any more dead people.  


Ra'ult, on the other hand, seemed of a different perspective, picking up trinkets and objects and dusting them off. They stared at the things, as if committing them to memory, and occasionally their eyes would go distant. At one point, they stood stone still for five whole minutes, not moving a muscle, holding a small statuette. He watched in confusion, before a memory came back to him- that’s right, they had that force power of seeing past events through objects. Were they trying to access memories from the personal effects? Kriff, he couldn't imagine... all the ghosts this place was stuffed with, all the trauma, and Ra'ult was still focused on trying to identify the people that had died here, so they could be known. It was the highest respect he could imagine for the dead, and his heart panged with strong emotion.  


Ra'ult placed the statuette back onto the desk reverently, and nodded their head in a small bow to it. "Are you... looking for memories?" "Indeed- personnel lists can only tell me so much. These people were my pack- I want to know who they were, in order to remember them. The force is being particularly open with the ability this time, I suspect because it also feels the pain of all these anonymous, abandoned souls." He hesitated, deliberately not focusing on his wonderings about the room and its owner, “Find what you need?” “Yes. I know the occupant of this room now.” They looked around the dust-covered room, as if comparing it to the clean, lived-in version they had seen. He didn’t ask about it.  


They left the dorm areas after Ra’ult had collected what knowledge they could about the occupants, turning the corner towards the main hub of the station. Geode had just been hoping that perhaps all the dead had been taken back to the planet by time and there would be no need for lingering, when they opened the doors.  


_Oh._ Now this hallway had been fought in, had seen combat. He was lucky that there weren't full corpses to be found- in the years since the purge, scavengers had apparently taken off with the majority, leaving only bone fragments and pieces of cloth and plastoid behind. But there were signs of struggle aplenty- scorch marks on every wall, furniture broken and scattered in failed barricades and cover. He could calculate the angles of the shots, seeing how the fight had gone- he could almost visualize where everyone was standing, both the shooters and the victims.  


His horrified musings were lost at a 'thud' behind him, and he startled, whipping around. Ra'ult had fallen to the floor and held themselves up on hands and knees, entire body trembling. He dropped in front of them, grasping their head and trying to snap them out of it, but it was no use- their eyes were far away. They must be feeling everything that had happened here- all the pain and betrayal and death in the emotional vestiges of the purge. His eyes itched, but he clenched his jaw and blinked the tears away. He had to stay strong here, Ra'ult needed him.  


It wasn’t long before they came back, clarity returning to their eyes with a numb horror. The two remained there for a moment, Geode carefully stroking their scales as they breathed through whatever they’d just seen. They eventually stood, legs wobbling slightly, and he scrambled to his feet to steady them, "Hey, we can go any time- we don't need to stay here. And- and we can come back tomorrow, to finish checking everything. You need a break." Ra'ult shook their head firmly, "I've seen worse." They shrugged off their cloak, using it as a basket as they knelt to collect the bone fragments. Geode stood in silence for a moment before sighing, helping them to pick up the scattered dry bone that remained of the jedi that had lived there.  


Ra'ult broke the silence, expression stone-like, "The first station I visited in the days after- Keelen's station- there were younglings. Hiding under beds, in closets- they almost looked alive, if I could not smell their decay." He couldn't keep his mind from conjuring the mental image, and his throat clenched around a breath, body freezing in place. Ra’ult didn’t notice, continuing in a low drone, “I visited many stations early on, each one more rotted and decayed than the last, and-“ "Stop", he gasped, "Please, stop. I can't-" The dam broke, and his eyes blurred with tears, the liquid disturbing the dust on the floor.  


Ra'ult snapped out of their steadfast determination finally, looking surprised, and tugged him to them, nearly lifting him from the floor entirely as they held him to their chest. He grasped at their tunic, pressing his face against them to smother the sobs now shaking his shoulders, and sank to the floor helplessly, Ra’ult cushioning him from the duracrete. "That's my brothers that killed those kids, that slaughtered all these people. It could just as easily have been me- killing jedi, killing kids. Maybe I did kill people and just don't remember it- three years is a long time-" His breath shuddered, and Ra'ult held him tighter, uncaring of the tears soaking into their tunic. "I'm so sorry, I didn't think... We can leave, right now. I'll come back tomorrow on my own and finish up, and-" "No." He sniffed, drying his eyes and hiccupping once, "We're almost done. We finish this now, so we don't have to come back." Ra’ult made to protest, but he climbed off of them and determinedly went back to picking up gnawed-on bones. 

  


\--  


They made it through the hallway in silence, collecting any remaining bone fragments before ending up in the main lobby of the station, with its front door to the outside opposite. The mechanism for that door had been shot out, which meant no escape for the majority of agricorps members who were not strong with the force. More fabric scraps rested there, at the door, and Ra'ult could feel the residual terror of the people who had died there- trapped, no way out, caught like rats at the end of a tunnel and escape was so close but so impossible. A memory flashed across their mind- countless voices screaming, _the door, please, the door, open the door, we’re so close, the door!_ The phrase ‘the door’ echoed in their head long after the memory faded, the endless maw of grief in their chest gaping wide at the terror of their pack’s last moments. Every station, it seemed, held new horrors for them to experience.  


The hangar was on the other side of the lobby, but before they even opened the door, their vomeronasal organ told them that they would find nothing there- the entire place was burned to cinders, oil and gas stores having combusted over time and reduced the ships, along with any corpses, to ash. The scent of flames and carbon was overwhelming, and they quickly shut the door and moved on.  


The last door was the archives and main hub of the installation. As this was not a large station, the archives were rather small as well, a few shelves of datapads in front of the main terminal. They sent Geode, eyes red and hands still shaking, over to the entertainment shelves, with the suggestion to download or take whatever interested him, while they focused on downloading the history and research files before wiping the pads so they were useless to any imperial forces. It took them a while, and their partner looked much calmer and more settled by the end of it, when they went for the personnel files and station data.  


Everything useful downloaded, they turned to Geode. "Is there anything of these machines you would like to take? We cannot leave anything usable for the empire." He took the few power back-ups from the terminal and a spare memory chip before declaring himself done. He eyed the terminal consideringly and a fire lit in his eyes, as Ra'ult had hoped for, "You said these things had to be destroyed, right?" "I did." He kicked the metal leg of the table away, making the desk and all its contents crash to the ground, then picked up the table leg and twirled it in his hand, "Guess I get to relieve some aggression, then." Ra’ult pointedly ignored how the makeshift weapon shook in his hand- they could feel something building up that needed to be released. They nodded, “I’ll leave you to it then, my friend. I’ll be outside with the pyre.” They had a door to face.  
\--

  


Geode was grateful that they had left, because what followed was entirely undignified. Not that crying in their arms earlier had been dignified, but this ugly, pent-up rage was nothing he wanted brought to light. It bubbled up in his gut, escaping him through brutal hits to the mainframe terminal, hits strong enough to crush plate metal and jar his arms painfully. How dare the empire- even this many years gone by since the purge and it could still make him feel like this, so small and weak! They had the fucking audacity to do… hells, everything- naming the individual injustices was impossible, even as they built up on top of each other in his head. The purge, the chips, the genocide of an entire culture group, the manipulation of both sides of the war, the enslavement and tyrannical rule over the civilians.  


They used him, they used _all_ of them, everyone in the galaxy. All these people who had only ever wanted to do good and help others, attacked by people they trusted in their own home! The attackers, fully loyal and content with the only people in the galaxy that treated them like full beings, forced to kill those kind people against their will! This same station, being played out over and over across the galaxy- endless replications of the same horrifying scenario in which unarmed farmers were slaughtered by their friends, who had been reduced to mindless puppets.  


This damn trash heap of a station full of memories and death and fucking betrayal, and no one was at fault for it except the emperor and his attack dog, Vader. His own memories flashed before him- people he’d lost before the purge, people he’d woken up to realize were gone, deaths that damn chip hadn’t even let him acknowledge. Spel’s vambrace, which he’d carried the entire war, and had apparently handed off without a thought under that chip’s influence. How easily they’d all been erased.  


Part of him wanted to go back through the dorms and look at every holo, memorize every face and name. If he ever met Vader, he wouldn’t waste time with conversation, but would just repeat the names of every person that had died, every person that had been reduced to rat-gnawed bone pieces and scraps of fabric and emotional impressions chock full of fear and hurt and death. He would start there, then go on to every other name he knew that had suffered and died, brothers and jedi alike, until Vader eventually tired of his rambling and inevitably killed him. He wasn’t sure if the imperial monster even had the capacity to feel sadness or regret, but he would make sure that Vader knew the names of the vengeful dead that were waiting to tear his soul apart piece by piece in death.  


He stopped with a sudden huffed sigh, wiping the sweat from his brow- that wasn’t right, jedi didn’t do vengeance. He looked down on his work, noticing that the terminal was now crushed into tiny metal pieces, certainly unrecognizable as having been a mainframe, and his table leg wasn’t faring much better. An ironic thought caught at his mind, and he brought the tool down on the remains with one final clanging blow and a vicious grin- jedi may not do vengeance, but the vod’e certainly did.  
  


Rage spent and emotionally exhausted, he went to join Ra’ult outside the station. The door to the outside- where various fabric scraps and blaster shots indicated a great many people had met their end- had been pried open with the force, flung into its slot in the wall with such strength that the metal of the wall warped. Opening the door for these people that had been closed to them so long- the profundity of the action echoed deep in his soul. He spotted his partner not far from the door, sitting in the field. They had dug a small crater in the ground as a pyre and laid the bone fragments in, holding the heat of the fire close to the bones with a small force shield.  


He dropped at their side and massaged at one of his wrists, which was twinging painfully. They turned to look at him, eyes flashing with something like guilt, and took his hands in theirs, inspecting for any damage. He smirked, “Nothing broken, just tender. I maybe overdid it with the mainframe.” They folded their hands around his, and within seconds there was no pain at all, the probable bruising stopped in its tracks. “Mm, thanks. You didn’t need to.” He noticed that the force shield over the pyre hadn’t dissolved at all- they had clearly gotten stronger. Ra’ult stared into the fire, tucking their hands back into their frame ashamedly, “I did. I was so focused on the job I had to do- so desensitized because of how many times I’ve had to do it- that I didn’t think of how you might react to the scene, and I am so sorry for that. There’s no excuse for not taking your perspective into account, and I won’t fail you like that again.”  


He patted their arm, “Hey, it’s alright, I get it. You had three years to experience everything before I came along, get used to it as much as possible, and even though it’s been three years for me now, I still… hadn’t ever seen anything to that extent, to make it real and personal. The new status quo was already… set in place, by the time you picked me up- the reality of the purge cleaned up and painted over.”  


It was an unfortunate trait of all sentients, that one could never fully understand something they didn’t personally experience, but he’d still previously thought he knew the grim reality of the purge before they came to this station. He’d been a soldier- he’d seen more death than the vast majority of the galaxy had- but being in that hallway, seeing the blaster marks and barricades and calculating the angles of the shots and knowing exactly how it had all happened… it was always different when you saw it yourself.  


The two were silent for a while, before Geode spoke again, "You're getting stronger." They blinked out of their thoughts, "Mm?" "You're getting stronger, in the force. You healed me without that force shield even wavering- couldn't do that last year." Ra'ult hummed pensively, and he leaned against their side, hands still fidgeting together. "How are you holding up?" "I'm fine, it's much easier when they don't look like people any-" They stopped themselves mid-word, "Oh, sorry." Geode nudged them pointedly with his shoulder, "No, remember, we've had this talk. Yeah, our trauma conflicts and we're gonna have different perspectives and priorities in certain situations, but that shouldn't stop us from being able to discuss it with each other. If we stopped talking about everything that conflicts, we couldn't talk about the purge at all." He stared into the fire, watching as a fragment of bone crumbled into blue-black dust, now indistinguishable from the wood ash, "Plus, I agree- it is easier."  


Ra’ult sighed, a deep drained sound, "You only saw the horrors that this place has become. Through memories, both mine and ones I've accessed here, I know what it used to be when it was peaceful, who these people were before they were... this." They waved a claw at the burning bone fragments. He huffed a bitter laugh, "I think knowing them would make it worse for me, honestly." They hummed, never looking away from the flames, "I can understand that. Thinking of Keelen... hurts. It hurts not just because she's dead, because I can remember my other friends with only minimal pain, but because I saw her dead. I held her corpse in my arms, already partially decayed. Memories of her are replaced by that now- I can't think of our childhood fun without her sunken eyes and ruddy skin replacing her living face in each one. I can't remember her scent either, only the sweet sickness of decay. She used to smell lovely, like chlorophyll and berry-scented lotion and soil, but I can't recall that scent now.” They seemed to deflate, shoulders slumping and eyes sliding closed, “And yet… she’s the only one I ever got to mourn properly."  


They were silent for a long moment, the atmosphere filled only with the crackling of the fire and a light wind rattling the faraway trees, before they spoke again in a thoughtful murmur, “You know… in varanol tradition, the living are supposed to wear decorations- jewelry, I mean- and then when they die, these decorations are given to a tree, and that tree acts as a sort of memorial for them, a place where the living can visit to talk to them.” He nodded- another factor of varanol culture that was similar to what he knew- and his hand went unconsciously to his claw necklace. He looked at theirs- the crystal and the goggles, both things he had made them- and stopped, train of thought derailed.  


“Wait… you didn’t have any decorations when we met- no jewelry or anything.” They huffed a mirthless laugh, “You are correct. I wore a necklace during my youth- had it from the day I stepped off Tre’aran and wore it through my entire life at the temple.” They went quiet, staring into the flames- he was almost afraid to ask what had happened to it. It was obviously related to the purge- he couldn’t help but think that, amidst their grief, Ra’ult had done something to it.  


“You left it at that station, didn’t you?” Their eyes flicked to him in surprise, amber glowing in the firelight, before they dipped their head in a nod. “There are memory trees for both Keelen and myself at the forest’s edge of that station.” His brows furrowed, “But why? You survived.” They shrugged, shoulders seeming heavy, “In the physical sense, yes- but when I was there, newly feeling the deaths of all of my family and convinced I was alone in the galaxy… some vital part of me died. I am no longer the person I was before the purge, thus I consider that my old identity died at that station, and memorialized them as such.” Their claw lifted to the crystal necklace hanging between their clavicles, tapping it gently. “These do not belong to the old Ra’ult from Before- that person is gone. I am born from the flames six years ago.”  


He eyed them carefully- it explained a lot that they perceived themselves this way. That was why they endeavored to not speak of life before the purge- by putting that all in the past, in a past life that was now dead and gone, they could move on and survive in this new, hateful galaxy without being entirely crushed by their sorrow. He mourned for the Ra’ult that he’d only ever seen in holos- the Ra’ult they’d shown him on the screen who laughed and sparred and lived with their family at the temple.  


Occasionally, he got glances at that young, naïve corpsmember that Ra’ult had been, before they were shut away again, but it was enough to confirm that their old identity wasn’t quite as gone as they made themselves think. But they were right in the general sense. His old self couldn’t survive under the empire, either- he’d had to become someone new to do that. The empire had taken more than their loved ones, from both of them- it had taken their identities, as well.  
He leaned against Ra’ult’s side, nudging them comfortingly with an elbow, “Well, I’m… glad I was able to give you something, to help with a new identity.” They leaned minutely towards him as well, a deep sigh loosening their muscles, and murmured, “You made me want to live again, not just exist. And I can never thank you enough for that.” Some fragile, quivering feeling deep in his soul made itself known, and he tucked himself to their side more solidly- it was just him and them now, and that was how it was supposed to be. The two sat in comfortable silence, simply watching the small fire burn down against the growing darkness of the fields around them.  


Eventually there was little left of the remains, and Ra'ult collapsed the force shield in on itself, crushing the last intact pieces into dust, before releasing them. The dust flew into the air and away, both beings watching. Despite not having any particular stake in Ra’ult’s religious views about the spirit, it still felt like a weight off his shoulders that the corpses were now gone.  


“Come on, Bral- let’s go home. I think we both need a nice hearty meal.” Ra’ult pulled themselves to their feet, prosthetic claws digging furrows in the soil. They brushed their tunic off, and took in a deep breath of the clean air, before sighing, seeming to release something with the motion. “Yes- home.” They glanced at him, some liveliness having returned to their eyes, and the slightest of grins quirked their mouth, “I expect you’ll be wanting hot chocolate, then?” He returned the grin, elbowing them playfully, “’Course! It’s getting damn cold out, and we’ve had a long day.”  


The two made their way back to their ship, leaving the abandoned station and its ghosts behind them. There would be more, he knew- there were always more dead. And if they came upon another abandoned station, his partner would insist on clearing it as well, to put their pack to rest. But they were not alone in this self-appointed duty anymore, and the two of them could keep each other from falling apart under the weight.


End file.
